“Every single time ICE was here, my business was down”
The massive, out-of-control deportation machine built by Trump and his allies is pulling workers off farms, ranches, and job sites, and out of senior care facilities and restaurant kitchens across the country. The business leaders who depend on those workers are now speaking out. Across multiple industries in every region of the country, business owners say enforcement raids and the stripping of legal work status are driving away workers and customers, delaying projects, raising prices, and pushing businesses toward closure.They’re warning Washington that these workers are essential to the survival of local economies and national industries.
All of this is driving up prices and American families are already feeling the cost. This is the ICE Tax: the price families and businesses pay when the government chooses mass deportation over their pocketbooks.
Here’s what the record shows:
Farmers and Ranchers Warn the Nation’s Food Supply Is at Risk
- Nationwide: Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford, who chairs the Business Roundtable’s immigration committee, emphasized: “Immigration is central to the economic health and the growth of our economy and our businesses.”
- Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma: Three major cattle groups warned that ICE operations are having “a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table” and will drive up beef prices.
- Florida: A Miami-Dade plant nursery owner lost half his staff when the Trump administration canceled Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for roughly 300,000 Haitians, and has struggled to find new employees, even after raising pay to $25 an hour. Now he says he’ll have to close: “I voted for Trump but I didn’t vote for this.”
- Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia: Zack Evans, an executive manager of the fourth-largest chicken company in the U.S., Mountaire Farms, expressed that ending TPS would likely lead to the loss of “approximately 15 percent of our total workforce within the next 45 days—nearly 1,300 employees, including over 900 on Delmarva—on top of prior losses resulting from changes”.
Builders Say Raids Are Keeping Workers Off Job Sites
- Nationwide: National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Chairman Bill Owens warned that “increased immigration enforcement is discouraging legal workers from reporting to job sites.” In a federal court brief, NAHB said mandatory detention has forced project cancellations and cost U.S.-born workers their jobs.
- Nationwide: A major private builder CEO told HousingWire that crews are too afraid to show up: “We’re talking about people who are citizens, who are here legally, and they feel targeted and afraid too.”
- Virginia: A Richmond builder reported that ICE “has had significant impacts to vendors throughout Virginia/Maryland in the last 90 days,” which he said has had a “major impact” on starting new housing builds.
- Texas and Florida: In a September John Burns Research and Consulting survey of homebuilders, a Houston builder said ICE is “becoming a very large issue and causing labor shortages,” and a Jacksonville builder said enforcement is “causing a strain on both the labor force, labor costs and cycle times.”
Senior Care Providers Are Closing Beds and Turning Away Patients
- Nationwide: LeadingAge CEO Katie Smith Sloan said home health agencies are “just not able to take new clients” and nursing homes “have closed beds and closed wings” due to workforce shortages that have resulted from Trump’s policies including the ending of TPS.
- New York: Ideal Home Care Services CEO Nicole Laborde was forced to let go 20 to 25 Haitian employees – out of a staff of about 100 – after TPS ended: “The client feels like they’re losing an extension of their family.”
- Wisconsin: Robin Wolzenburg of Koru Health, which runs senior living communities highlighted the challenges of trying to replace workers caught up in Trump’s immigration crackdown: “We don’t have domestic workers. I mean, we just don’t. The market is so tight, and the competition is so tight, and caregiving is a tough job, it really is. You’re caring for the most vulnerable people in our population.”
Main Street Businesses Are Losing Staff and Customers
- Florida: The Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association warned that ending TPS for Haitians and Syrians affects more than 93,000 Florida workers, many in hospitality. FRLA president and CEO Carol Dover said TPS holders in Florida contribute an estimated $2.6 billion annually to Florida’s economy.
- New York: Bay Shore cheese maker Nelson Hernández said orders drop after ICE arrests near the stores he supplies: “If we cannot support the business because of the issues we are facing, we will have to close. We will survive as much as we can.”
- Maine: About three-quarters of 245 Greater Portland businesses surveyed said fear of ICE kept employees, customers, and community members away from downtown. A state report estimates enforcement could cost Maine up to 7,000 workers and $3.3 billion annually.
- Restaurants
- Massachusetts: After ICE raids in New Bedford, a Guatemalan restaurant’s business fell an estimated 50%. Taqueria La Raza owner Iris de la Rosa warned, “I think I have to close the door because it’s too much.”
- New Jersey: Lou Smith, a self-described conservative who owns two Manasquan restaurants, warned: “Restaurants don’t run on ideas. They run on people. And right now, that balance is off, like way off.”
- New York: “If you were to eliminate undocumented workers from this industry, it would collapse,” said Scott Wexler of the Empire State Restaurant & Tavern Association in Albany.
- Texas: In a Texas Restaurant Association survey, 36% of restaurants reported losing employees due to ICE actions. “That tells us that a really sizable portion of Texas restaurants are feeling one or more impacts because of our immigration enforcement activities,” said Kelsey Erickson Streufert, the association’s chief public affairs officer.
The Bottom Line: From coast-to-coast, farmers, builders, care providers, Main Street shops, and restaurant owners are all describing the same crisis: Trump’s mass deportation machine is not only lawless and reckless, but is driving away the workers who are essential to the nation’s economy. Every elected official who voted for these policies now owns the damage and is accountable to Americans everywhere. Congress must end the ICE Tax by stopping the mass deportations that are squeezing American businesses and families and hurting our communities.
